


Ghost of a Story

by tormalyne



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 16:29:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tormalyne/pseuds/tormalyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joint summer training camp with Kaijou ended up being exactly as annoying as Kagami had thought it would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost of a Story

Joint summer training camp with Kaijou ended up being exactly as annoying as Kagami had thought it would be: Kise fawned all over Kuroko, Kuroko took his resulting bad mood out on Kagami by letting the dog into the gym, and between Riko and the grumpy ex-captain who’d come along to fill in for Kaijou’s coach, Kagami was seriously considering not breathing as a valid option to make it stop hurting every time he moved.

And that was just the first two days.

The third day, Kise had apparently decided to add Kagami to his list of acceptable people to hang all over and spent every break pressed up against his side as they gulped down water, chattering away and apparently having mastered the not needing to breath skill Kagami’d been working on the day before. Despite himself, Kagami was grudgingly impressed; Kise’d really been working on his stamina.

“You looked sad being left out,” Kise said when he finally got fed up and asked, with a grin so sympathetic and well-meaning that Kagami couldn’t muster up the heart to shove Kise’s arm off from around his shoulders even when he knew it was all so much bullshit.

At one point, Kagami somehow ended up with one of Kise’s extra bottles of water without any clear idea how it’d happened. One moment he’d been staring at his empty bottle, irritated because he’d have to go three buildings over to fill it, and the next he’d been ambushed by the blinding white of Kise’s smile, a flutter of his criminally long lashes, and the frankly unfair softness of Kise’s skin as Kise’s fingers brushed against his to press the bottle into his hand.

Kuroko had the good timing (or had been standing there, unnoticed long enough) to wander past them on the way to shooting drills and said, “It’s so nice to see you’re taking to the spirit of inter-team bonding, Kagami-kun,” in the driest of his deadpan tones. For the life of him, Kagami couldn’t explain why the offhand remark made his cheeks burn.

It had to be the heat in the gymnasium. It was sweltering and even with all the doors propped open, the air was still and swampy; anyone would get a little lightheaded.

Kagami raised the bottle to his lips, took a long pull, and emptied half the water in three big gulps. It was one of Kise’s stupidly fancy mineral waters and it tasted a little of orange zest – Kagami had the sudden thought that it must be what Kise’s mouth tasted like, and, directly on that thought’s heels, felt the sudden urge to make the long trip to the sinks outside and dunk his head in the hopes that if he drowned himself, he’d stop thinking things like that.

The fourth day, they had only half practice, and Kagami was vindicated in his heartfelt and secretly cherished belief that Kuroko really was the evilest asshole in the whole asshole-filled lot of the Generation of Miracles when he oh-so-helpfully suggested they spend their free evening playing Hundred Ghost Stories.

“It’s summer,” Kuroko said innocently to Kagami’s look of outraged accusation. “We have to tell ghost stories in summer.” Both teams immediately and loudly agreed with such wild enthusiasm that there wasn’t anything Kagami could say without actually feeling like a huge jerk.

To top the whole sorry thing off, Kagami had the terrible luck of having Kise happen to look right at him and see when he blanched at the suggestion; while everyone else scurried off to hunt up candles, Kagami was left disconcerted by the startlingly keen look on Kise’s face, at once both worryingly eager and unsettlingly knowing.

That was just what he needed. Ghost stories and famous asshole Kise Ryouta making fun of him for being scared of them.

The Hundred Stories started off okay, mostly urban legends of the type Kagami’d heard before and had learned not to be bothered by even if there were a few new twists courtesy of being in Japan instead of the States. A friend of a friend story was the same no matter where he was, and some pop up about a red room was hardly anything he couldn’t handle. Between the two teams, they’d scraped up maybe ten candles, barely enough to light the room they were all huddled in, and even though the flickering light cast eerie shadows into the corners, threw hulking, disquieting shapes against the walls that didn’t quite match anyone’s silhouette, it was still a room full of sweaty, noisy teenage boys.

There was no way they were actually making it through the full one hundred stories anyway, not when it required everyone to sit around patiently for hours on end. Izuki-senpai wouldn’t be able to resist making one of his puns at some point and Kasamatsu was already eyeing the back of Kise’s head like he was deciding on the perfect place to aim one of his flying kicks. Unwisely, Kagami let himself be lulled into a tentative sense of relief; none of the stories were too bad so far, even if he was starting to feel a little jumpy. Kiyoshi-senpai’s gleefully told tale of how he’d made friends with a boy who’d turned out to be a heart-eating ghost and how he’d woken up the next morning with stained sheets and bloody crescents dug into his chest had been entirely too detailed for Kagami’s liking.

Then it came around to Kuroko’s turn, and Kagami realized what a huge mistake feeling any kind of relief had been.

“This is a story I’ve heard about our own school,” Kuroko said, hushed and secretive, and a chill went straight down Kagami’s spine. “There’s a certain room on the third floor of the east wing that no one uses any more, not even for storage. They say it’s where a girl was murdered by her crush the day after she confessed to him.”

Everyone in the room took a collectively drawn breath as Kuroko leaned forward. The candlelight on his face turned his skin even paler than usual and reflected coldly in his eyes. With the planes of his normally familiar features shadowed and strange, he looked suddenly unrecognizable and ethereal.

“If you walk past it and hear her screaming three times, you’ll know that you’re going to die soon, too.”

Kagami gulped – it was just a story, Kuroko was just making it up, there was no way anything like that had actually happened at Seirin, not when it was so new – and then, right outside the room, _something howled three times_ , long, high-pitched baying sounds that set his teeth on edge and sent a shot of adrenaline straight through his chest.

Everything went kind of fuzzy and unfocused for a few minutes, but Kagami could proudly say that he’d only screamed a little (and not the loudest) by the time everyone was done thrashing around and panicking and Kuroko’d opened the door to let Nigou in. Apparently, he’d been the one feeling left out all along.

Kagami couldn’t mind too much, though; even though Kise was laughing at him, he didn’t say a word about the death grip Kagami had on him, and Kise’s hand was soft and warm curled around his.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [BPS on tumblr](http://basketballpoetsociety.tumblr.com/). I polished it up a bit to post here, but everyone should check them out, it's lots of fun!
> 
> The pop up about a red room refers to [this urban legend](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Room_%28animation%29). No, I didn't get distracted for an hour looking up creepy stories at all, what would make you think that?


End file.
